


General Relativity

by scribblscrabbl



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Alien Invasion, Alternate Universe - Future, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Inception Reverse Big Bang Challenge 2015, M/M, Time Loop, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-03
Updated: 2015-10-03
Packaged: 2018-04-23 15:40:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4882486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribblscrabbl/pseuds/scribblscrabbl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>This isn’t a glitch, it’s a reset, the second chance he knew better than to hope for but hoped for anyway like a fever he couldn’t sweat out. It’s the universe telling him that if he does it right, he’ll pay his debts and then some, because he can keep the story from ending here. He can save the story. And to save the story, he needs to save the hero.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. one.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Inception Reverse Bang 2015 and kavsdick's magnificent fan mix ([Side A](http://8tracks.com/kavsdick/wound) and [Side B](http://8tracks.com/kavsdick/ricochet)). Go listen and admire repeatedly. Seriously. I also have to thank her for being so incredibly receptive to this ridiculous idea that came out of left field, AND THEN MAKING A B-SIDE TO FIT THE FIC. <3
> 
> This was inspired by the movie, Edge of Tomorrow (which was inspired by the Japanese novel _All You Need Is Kill_ ). Confession: I know little to nothing about sci-fi and its tropes. This may or may not be painfully apparent once you start reading.
> 
> Last but certainly not least: I give my undying gratitude to kate_the_reader for being such a badass beta reader and sharing this strange and wonderful writing journey with me. <3

**_Tuesday, October 3, 2064, 04:44, Park Hyatt, Manhattan, New York_ **

Eames wakes a minute before the alarm, eyes wide open but head still in the dream, still half-submerged and choking on brackish water, leg pinned down by 15-stone of corrugated steel. 

He spends the next minute breathing through his mouth and filling in the rest. The screams, the slaughter, the silence. Then he swings his legs over the edge of the bed and turns on the news.

“ _—Kowalski has declined to comment but we have Specialist Lucas Nash here to give us his take on the significance of the victory at Hilton Head._ ”

The view from his window is something else — all 843 acres of Central Park rushing north to meet the horizon, lush and thriving while the city decays. Most everyone from the five boroughs has moved further inland. Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, St. Louis. Turns out aliens are fond of coastlines, greedy for Earth’s most abundant natural resource. Diplomacy was a word NATO threw around until the invasion at Normandy, and even in the throes of mass pandemonium, the media managed to milk the irony for all its worth. Ten days later, faster than anyone had anticipated, France was a lost cause. Turns out this particular breed of alien are also bloody vicious bastards, towering, eight-legged beasts from your worst childhood nightmare — steely, quick, and built to kill.

The television broadcasts the sounds of warfare, tanks, mortars, the new generation of supersuits outfitted with stripped down SS-210s.

Eames glances at the screen as he makes his way to the bathroom, footage that’s been aired on a loop for weeks to boost morale. Kowalski cuts down five Black Widows in breathtaking succession with his trademark broadsword. Kowalski leaping through the air, seemingly defying gravity as he single-handedly turns the tide of battle. A civilian-turned-war-hero overnight with a face more globally recognized as a wartime icon than Uncle Sam and Rosie the Riveter ever were. The kind of face Eames would go for if he had time to waste — strong jaw line, pouty lips, and sharp, dark eyes he wouldn’t mind making a little hazy with lust. The way Kowalski wears his supersuit doesn’t hurt either, wears it like he’s encased in fucking silk instead of two inches of recycled metal, made for durability and not much else.

It’s Kowalski Eames thinks about as he digs his razor out of his pack, combs his fingers through his hair one last time as he stares into the mirror, and then shaves it all off. It’s war he thinks about. Hero, coward, lover, fighter, it’s all the same out there. War strips you down, wipes you clean. The only distinction that matters is dead or alive, and even then it depends on who you’re asking.

He sweeps up the hair and makes sure he has his paperwork before pulling off the chain around his neck. He thumbs the raised type, the nicks and scratches, warming the steel with his palm, then drops it into the top drawer of the nightstand.

**_05:59, JFK FOB, Manhattan, New York_ **

“We ship out at 09:00, son, you sure you’re ready for this?” Master Sergeant Cobb squints at Eames from under his cap. “Most new recruits spend a couple weeks at West Point before they transfer out here. If you’ve never been in a suit—”

“With all due respect, Sergeant,” Eames sidesteps to avoid a truck rolling by, loaded with enough munitions to bury a small village because if there’s anything that can stiffen a man’s spine in combat, it’s a fully automatic anti-tank grenade launcher, “I know what I’m signing up for.”

Cobb frowns, clearly unconvinced that he won’t blow his own head off before they even land on Montauk, and then starts to walk.

“Normally I wouldn’t give you a choice but we’re spread thin at the moment.” What Cobb isn’t saying is his soldiers are dying faster than he can replace them. “I’m putting you in Tango squad.”

Then they round the corner and come face to face with Arthur Kowalski, Boy Wonder, prepping his combat gear with a strip of Velcro between his teeth, right knuckles wrapped and taped. Dominant hand; Eames can already tell by the way he’s trying not to favor it, and tensing when he does.

“Kowalski, Private Eames here just bused in from the city this morning. He’s champing at the bit to fight the good fight.” Cobb glances at his watch as Kowalski plucks the Velcro from his mouth and stands to attention. “You don’t have much time so just give him the basic run-down, will you?”

Kowalski looks at Eames, sizing him up with those dark, pretty eyes, which is when Eames decides the day’s already going significantly better than he planned.

“Yes, sir,” Kowalski says shortly, jaw clenching like the last thing he wants to do is spend what could possibly be his last few hours on God’s green earth indulging in Eames’s delusions of grandeur.

“And show him how to turn off the goddamn safety!” Cobb shouts over his shoulder as he leaves the way they came.

Eames’s eyes drift and fall on the sword propped against the table in an unmarked sheath that, like the sword, looks as if it’s been hewn with brute force out of an apocalyptic wreck. The leather wrapped around the grip looks slightly more forgiving, faded from use.

“Now that’s not a sight you see every day,” Eames remarks, looking up at Kowalski, the hard jaw, impeccable carriage. Military man through and through. “Excalibur, isn’t it? She looks even meaner up close. I don’t suppose – ”

“Let’s start by setting a few ground rules, Private Eames,” Kowalski interrupts, tone clipped, as he returns to reassembling his knee pads with practiced fingers.

“Eames will do just fine, love.” The insouciance is probably overdone, but Kowalski looks like a hard one to crack. Eames is almost loath to try, his is so exquisite a shell – smooth, glittering, not a flaw in sight.

Those fingers pause for a second, a hairline fracture. 

“One, you don’t touch anything unless it’s your personal effects, your suit, or your dick. Two, you address me as Sergeant when you open your mouth. Three, you listen to every goddamn word I say and, maybe, you’ll make it through the day.”

Kowalski gives the straps on the pads a final tug before lifting his head up to level at Eames the kind of stare that’s no doubt made weaker hearts wither. Eames would say he gets off on intimidation and power plays, except his instinct tells him Kowalski’s not that kind of man.

“I’m yours to command. Sergeant.” Eames allows his mouth to twitch, just not enough to get him into any real trouble, and watches the line of Kowalski’s throat as he swallows.

“I’ll introduce you to the squad.”

They’re in the middle of a card game when Kowalski and Eames walk in, with cigarettes and fancy French soap for stakes.

“You sneaky fucker, you had that six up your sleeve all this time, didn’t you,” one private accuses, looking daggers at the straight on the table.

His opponent just smiles like a shark and shrugs, sweeping his winnings into his pack.

“Didn’t your mother ever teach you to lose graciously?”

“Private Eames, you’re looking at Tango squad.” Kowalski interrupts, casting a withering look at the two men who clearly have a track record for this sort of thing. “Yusuf and Saito, who like to think they’re in Monte fucking Carlo in their free time, Jeanne, Fury, Blake, and Garcia. Tango squad, this is Private Eames. He’ll be joining in on the fun today, so let’s all give him a warm fucking welcome.”

Yusuf, the sore loser, starts clapping, then looks sheepish when no one else deigns to join. 

“Those are some pretty tattoos you got there, Private Eames,” says Fury, her stare, smeared with kohl, like a punch in the gut.

Eames glances at the tribal ink swirling across one bicep and the phoenix rising from the ashes on the other. 

“What can I say, I like pretty things,” he confesses freely as he slides his eyes to Kowalski, who raises an eyebrow. “But, really, the tattoos are a defense mechanism. I’m a big teddy bear on the inside, so I try to look fucking hard on the outside.”

Most of them look uncomfortable in the ensuing silence, unsure, because you don’t go into a war spilling secrets like that on your first day.

“I don’t know where you found this crazy bastard, Sergeant, but I like him,” Yusuf grins.

Tango squad, Eames quickly finds, is a delightful bunch of misfits. Yusuf and Fury are convicted felons out on good behavior, Saito a pastry chef with a black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, Jeanne a French expat who speaks no English, and Blake and Garcia, two MMA fighters who only grunt when spoken to. And they all respect Kowalski, maybe even like him. Turns out he’s not so much a stick-in-the-mud as he is a glutton for competence with a distaste for insolent pricks who think they can piss on procedure and get off with a light slap on the wrist.

“Rumor is he was an architect before he enlisted,” Yusuf tells him as they’re strapping on the gear made to cushion their suits and minimize chafing. It’s an admirable show of good faith really, to assume once you get into one that you’ll get out of it the same way. “And his entire family – parents, younger sister – died in Normandy, on fucking holiday no less. Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“You don’t actually know anything about him?” Eames frowns, tightening the straps on his vest before looking at Kowalski, standing fifty meters down the hangar talking to Cobb, still in a thin t-shirt that pulls attractively across his shoulders when he gesticulates.

“No one does. He keeps all the personal stuff under wraps. Only ever talks about the war. He’s obsessed, but I suppose you can’t blame him, can you,” Yusuf shrugs, voice colored with sympathy, making Eames wonder if Kowalski’s lucky enough to fight alongside men who would die for him.

“What were you in for, anyway?”

“Drug trafficking. Was making a killing before the Feds stuck their noses in.” Yusuf still sounds peeved about the whole thing, and Eames can empathize. He has his own history with law enforcement – long and fraught with conflict, although he prefers to call them misunderstandings.

“All right, assholes, time to suit up.” He looks up to see Kowalski walking through to appraise their handiwork, eyes settling on Eames for a second that feels interminable, like maybe they could’ve found something in each other if they just had the time. And Eames imagines that’s all you ever have in war to keep you warm, in between death and survival – brief, oxygen-starved moments that flare, painful and delicate, before they’re snuffed out.

He’s not sure which of them looks away first.

“Any last words of advice?”

Yusuf yanks the lever that drops the suit from its cables and says grimly, “Don’t take your finger off the trigger.”

**_09:00, Montauk, New York_ **

The choppers converge on Montauk in four finger-four formations, two from the North and two from the West. The sky is a dull steely gray, weighed down by a persistent cloud covering. The coastline down below looks choppy, restless, like it senses impending destruction, its shores laid to waste, and after that, scars running deep.

“I fucking hate rain,” Yusuf gripes, knocking a hand against his helmet. Eames forgot how fucking stifling and useless the helmets are.

“Rain will be the least of your problems, my friend,” Fury says, needlessly, but they’re all doing their part to fill the silence. It’s always the moments before an assault that eat away at your conviction, draw out the terror, insidious and quick.

“Okay, Tango, get ready to drop!” Kowalski instructs from his position at the tail.

Eames is in the middle of yanking off his helmet when something blasts a hole into the side of their chopper. It kills Blake instantly.

“Jesus Christ!” He hears Kowalski holler as they start losing elevation, and then, “Drop! Goddamn it, drop now!”

Fury heeds the order first, then Saito and Yusuf, before Eames gathers his wits and punches the release button.

He swings wildly for a few heart-stopping moments, the chopper above swerving towards the beach, dragging him along for the ride. Then his cables disengage and he lands, hard, on damp sand on both knees, a little stunned and breathless but – incredibly – in one piece.

On the ground it’s fucking mass pandemonium.

The Widows knew. They anticipated the assault, waited for the humans to come like lambs to the slaughter, and Eames suddenly can’t move, can’t think because it feels like déjà vu. Brighton all over again.

“Get a move on, you crazy bastard!” Yusuf yells at him, running past, shooting like a lunatic until, in the blink of an eye, he’s crushed by the steel wreck of a chopper falling from the sky.

“Shit,” Eames swears, gathering his wits and stumbling up, “ _Fuck_.”

Which is when the first Widow comes at him, lashing out with its limbs gleaming, black as pitch, flexing like there’s muscle and tendon underneath the ridges of steel. He ducks and swings on instinct, the rifle on his right arm stunning the thing just long enough for him to shoot it dead.

He takes down two more, then a fourth, before he’s down on his knees again, left shoulder cramping up, leg throbbing from the fracture he didn’t let heal properly.

When he looks up, he catches sight of Kowalski further up the beach near the dunes, hacking and slashing with Excalibur like he’s in bloody combat training, precise and ruthlessly efficient. Then Eames sees it — her. A female Widow, tearing through soldiers like rag dolls, moving towards Kowalski, inhumanly quick, and then impaling him with one cruel leg.

“ _No_!”

Eames’s mind goes blank, quiet, and then he starts sprinting, digging his feet into sand made firmer by the rain, as fast as his suit will allow. 

He doesn’t stop when he reaches Kowalski, just snatches up the sword and twists onto his back, letting his momentum do all the work as he slides under the beast, leg still stuck in her kill, and shoves the blade into her gut.

Warm, viscous fluid splashes onto his face, suffocating him. And then he blacks out.


	2. two.

**_Tuesday, 04:44, Park Hyatt_ **

He wakes a minute before the alarm, eyes wide open but head still in the dream, still on his back with Kowalski’s sword buried in the Widow’s bloated belly, gagging on the sour stench of its death.

He swings his legs over the edge of the bed, chest heaving, as he pushes his hands through his hair – the inch that he shaved off five hours ago. Five hours –

He fumbles for the remote and switches on the telly.

“ _– Kowalski has declined to comment but we have Specialist Lucas Nash here to give us his take on the significance of the victory at Hilton Head._ ”

The date in the upper-right corner tells him it’s Tuesday.

He stands abruptly and starts to pace between the two double beds, sifting wildly through the possible scenarios. He dreamed the whole thing up, vividly and in excruciating detail. He’s coming out of a five-hour long psychotic episode. The space-time continuum has bent backwards on itself.

Then he’s slamming on the brakes because that’s not a train of thought he cares to ride at the moment. A dream he can deal with – whether he admits it or not, he abandoned the distinction between dreaming and waking months ago – so that’s the story he chooses to believe as he digs his razor out of his pack. On the 40” flat screen, Kowalski cuts down five Widows in spectacular fashion.

Eight minutes later, Eames drops his tags in the drawer and walks out the door.

**_05:59, JFK FOB_ **

“We ship out at 09:00, son, you sure you’re ready for this?” Master Sergeant Cobb squints at Eames from under his cap. “Most new recruits spend a couple weeks at West Point before they transfer out here. If you’ve never been in a suit –”

“With all due respect, Sergeant,” Eames says faintly, hollowly, as if he’s reading off a script and this life isn’t his own, it’s staged for someone else’s entertainment, “I know what I’m signing up for.”

Cobb frowns, then starts to walk towards the barracks before Eames can wrap his head around the idea of a – parallel universe, alternate dimension, whatever the fuck this is that’s making the déjà vu creep in, corner him until he’s sick with claustrophobia. He jogs to catch up, cold sweat already making his shirt stick down his spine.

“Normally I wouldn’t give you a choice but we’re spread thin at the moment. I’m putting you in Tango squad.”

When they round the corner, Kowalski’s there, alive, undamaged, going through the same motions, taking up the same sharply defined space, hands slender and lovely.

Then Cobb’s yelling about the goddamn safety and Eames realizes Kowalski’s staring at him like he’s daft.

“Let’s start by setting a few ground rules, Private Eames,” Kowalski says, irritation creeping into his voice, and Eames keeps quiet this time, wondering if the rest of it will still play out exactly as before if he steps out of the frame.

“One, you don’t touch anything unless it’s your personal effects, your suit, or your dick. Two, you listen to every goddamn word I say and, maybe, you’ll make it through the day. Three, no smoking in the barracks or I will personally light a fire under your ass.”

So he hasn’t been relegated to spectator. He’s still a player in this game, and the thought of having the power to change its outcome makes his breath catch in his throat as he comes to terms with just how much he prefers the sight of Kowalski firmly occupying this world to the alternative.

“I don’t think this operation is a good idea,” he says without preamble, figuring every moment is an opportune moment to try to preempt mass slaughter.

Kowalski looks thrown for a loop. Eames wonders briefly how many people have ever succeeded in catching him off guard.

“And what makes you say that?”

Eames pauses, weighing the effectiveness of telling a preposterous lie against the even more preposterous truth.

He settles on a compromise. “What if they knew we were coming? Ever since Brighton, that’s been an increasingly likely scenario. An ugly, terrifying one. It would a bloodbath.”

Kowalski stares, giving nothing away, and Eames already knows it’s a losing argument.

“War is ugly and terrifying, Private. Anyone who says differently is trying to sell you something.”

Kowalski leads him to the squad after that. Saito beats Yusuf soundly at cards. Eames keeps his mouth shut, anticipation simmering in his gut, until they’re about done suiting up.

“Any last words of advice?” This time Kowalski doesn’t look his way.

Yusuf yanks the lever that drops the suit from its cables and says grimly, “Don’t take your finger off the trigger.”

**_09:00, Montauk_ **

He’s so far inside his own head that he barely registers Yusuf’s griping and Arthur’s orders. When the blast tears through the chopper, he’s the first to drop.

As soon as he hits the beach he picks out Yusuf in the chaos, running towards him like a man possessed, guns blazing, eyes gleaming like there’s nothing left to do but end as many of the motherfuckers as he can before they end him.

“Get a move on, you –”

Eames sweeps an arm out and knocks Yusuf clean to the ground. Two seconds later, the chopper’s ragged steel carcass falls from the sky, making sand fly and lash against Eames’s neck as he twists away from the impact.

“Bloody –” Yusuf starts then stops, staring dumbly at the spot where his body would’ve been unceremoniously squashed, and Eames would pause to demand a little more gratitude if he didn’t have a schedule to keep.

He cuts diagonally across the beach, carving out the straightest possible path to the dunes, dodging a few of the messier skirmishes because he can’t die, not yet.

Somewhere along the way he worked out the objective of the game, maybe worked it out the second he saw Kowalski again, impossibly resurrected. This isn’t a glitch, it’s a reset, the second chance he knew better than to hope for but hoped for anyway like a fever he couldn’t sweat out. It’s the universe telling him that if he does it right, he’ll pay his debts and then some, because he can keep the story from ending here. He can save the story. And to save the story, he needs to save the hero.

He catches the shape of Kowalski to his right, parrying a blow on both knees, and for a second he forgets to keep moving, forgets that time is a more slippery, sadistic imitation of itself in war.

The Widow comes at him from the left before he can twitch and sends him flying.

He hits the ground on his back, bones rattling, teeth grinding, and when he rolls over, he sees Kowalski die, exactly the same way as before, the Widow’s leg protruding from his chest like a scythe, slick with blood.

He tries to get up but his legs aren’t working. By the time he realizes he’s paralyzed from the waist down, the Widows tear him apart.

 

**_Tuesday, 04:44, Park Hyatt_ **

He wakes a minute before the alarm, screaming, tasting blood in his mouth.

When his mobile starts to sound, he gropes for it blindly and stays on his back for another minute, pushing down the bile in his throat. It’s one thing to prepare for death, take as given that it’ll be gruesome and hope it’s quick, but entirely something else to have to remember it, feel the phantom ache, bone-deep, of being butchered like raw meat.

He gets up and turns on the news even though he’s got the gist of it by now.

“ _– Kowalski has declined to comment but we have Specialist Lucas Nash here to give us his take on the significance of the victory at Hilton Head._ ”

“You know,” he says to Kowalski, who’s now prancing about on the screen playing hero and looking magnificent doing it, “it would make my life a hell of a lot easier if you’d just let me save your arse.”

**_09:12, Montauk_ **

Yusuf still offers disappointingly little in the form of gratitude when Eames plucks him from the jaws of death.

“Third time’s the charm,” Eames mutters, picking his way through the carnage to the dunes, hyper-vigilant and thrumming with adrenaline.

This time he gets ten meters closer to Kowalski than he ever was, and then his bloody trigger bloody sticks. This time, it’s death by decapitation.

 

**_Tuesday, 09:12, Montauk_ **

“Oh, dear me, thank you, Eames! You’re my knight in shining armor!” he shouts at Yusuf over his shoulder as he makes a break for the dunes.

He doesn’t even spot Kowalski before he gets blown to bits by friendly fire.

 

**_Tuesday, 09:12, Montauk_ **

In retrospect he reckons he got careless, or maybe just bloody fed up with Yusuf’s ingratitude.

He mistimes the collision and they both get flattened by the chopper.

 

**_Tuesday, 04:44, Park Hyatt_ **

“ _Goddamn it_ ,” he says with feeling as soon as he wakes, like clockwork, a minute before the alarm.

He presses the heels of his hands against his eyelids, wondering if the universe isn’t so much offering him redemption as it is taunting him with the possibility, just for kicks, having already decided he doesn’t deserve it, because, frankly, he’s fucking worthless. But maybe that, even, is giving him too much credit, too much significance among the billions of lives that, put together, would hardly tip the cosmic scale.

Nihilism’s never really been his style, but it agrees with his current mood, the stain he feels on him, in him, as indelible as his ink, a side effect of war that’s never in the fine print.

He swings his legs over the edge of the bed but doesn’t reach for the remote, just sets his elbows on his knees and stares at the carpet. He needs a new strategy, one that isn’t so idiotically myopic. So far his one-man show has been a spectacular failure. If it’s taught him anything, it’s taught him two things: that sand is the fucking worst terrain for war, and that he can’t succeed alone. He imagines there was never really a question of whom he should recruit, only a question of how.

**_06:11, JFK FOB_ **

“I’ve lived this day five times and none of them has ended on a high note, so trust me when I say you do not want to go through with this operation,” he cuts right to the chase after Cobb walks away, still yelling about the goddamn safety.

In his head, the scenario’s played out one of two ways: he’s laughed out of the barracks, or he’s immediately committed to the psych ward.

In reality, Kowalski just stares, eyes locking on his like heat-seeking missiles.

“This exact day,” Kowalski says shortly.

Eames blinks, not having prepared for his plan to actually go according to plan.

“This exact day,” he repeats, slowly, as a piece of the puzzle he didn’t know was missing slots into place. “This – this has happened to you before.”

There’s a subtle but unmistakable shift in Kowalski’s eyes, light spilling from a secret doorway.

“Keep your mouth shut and follow me,” Kowalski instructs, voice dropping half an octave, before he starts down the barracks without looking back, clearly expecting Eames to operate on blind faith. And Eames follows, telling himself that faith has absolutely nothing to do with it.

Kowalski takes him to a row of labs at the North end, steel-walled and windowless, made for sealing in secrets. He imagines that’s the thing about war; there’s always some part of it fought behind closed doors, quieter than the part fought out in the open, but no less ugly.

Kowalski knocks on door number one.

A young woman opens it, dressed in civilian clothing, wearing heavy duty goggles that dwarf her heart-shaped face. There’s a smudge of something that looks like engine grease on her cheek, a flowery scarf draped around her neck, and the entire sight, next to all the killing and dying and general fuckery he’s been through, throws Eames completely for a loop.

“Arthur,” she says, looking pleasantly surprised as she slides off the eye gear, leaving creases on her face.

That’s when Eames sees Kowalski smile for the first time, eyes softening with unmistakable affection, shoulders loosening, and – Christ – right cheek dimpling like they’re in a bloody romantic comedy and he’s pulling out all the stops to woo the girl, and Eames feels short on words, on breath, on _time_.

“Ariadne. Mind if we take a look at the phase-two prototype?”

Her eyes widen a tiny fraction as they slide briefly to Eames.

Then she grins. “Come in at your own risk, Sergeant.”

The inside of the lab is tidier than Eames expected. There’s a coffee maker in one corner, a truly impressive spread of computer hardware in another, and a beast of a machine dead center, with multiple arms equipped for welding, cutting, bolting, fusing. It probably turns into a full bar after hours. God, he could really go for a pint.

When the door closes behind them, Kowalski’s no longer smiling.

“Tell Ariadne what you told me.”

Eames crosses his arms. “How do I know I can trust her?”

“You trusted me,” Kowalski points out, not missing a beat, and Eames wants to say that it’s different, that he hasn’t watched her die, doesn’t have her death painted beneath his eyelids when he closes his eyes because he can’t save her, no matter how many second chances he gets.

But it feels a touch melodramatic, so instead he says, “I’ve still got time to regret it.”

“Fine,” Kowalski glares before turning to Ariadne, who’s monitoring the exchange with raised eyebrows. “Private Eames said he’s been repeating the day. He knows the assault doesn’t end well for us.”

There’s a pregnant pause before she says expressively, “Well, shit.”

“It wasn’t a fluke,” Kowalski adds cryptically.

Ariadne presses her lips together. “So my theory – ”

“It’s still the best we’ve got.”

They look at each other and Eames lets them communicate with their secret meaningful glances for a moment before deciding he’s had enough. While he makes a point of trusting people only as far as he can throw them, he hates being kept in the dark, slightly more than he hates not getting to have it both ways.

“Okay, all right,” he says huffily, and Kowalski turns to him, “our chopper got hit before we even dropped. They knew we were coming, I don’t know how. Yusuf – I managed to make my way up the beach and you were by the dunes, fighting an entire swarm of the bastards. One of the females, she came at you out of nowhere, so fucking quick – ”

Eames drags a hand over his mouth, thinking there’s no good way to say it, to spin death so that nothing caves or comes undone.

“I die,” Kowalski finishes for him. There’s a sharp intake of breath from Ariadne but Kowalski looks unshaken, utterly unconcerned, like Eames just told him it’s raining, or the mess hall’s run out of his least favorite breakfast cereal. “And you killed her. Slashed her belly open.”

Eames stares for a second before inquiring, “Do you usually take portents of your own death this lightly?” He turns to Ariadne and reiterates, “Does he usually take portents of his own death this lightly?”

Then turning back to Kowalski he demands, “And how the hell do you know that? You can’t possibly know that.”

This time Kowalski visibly crumples, leaning forward to lay his forearms against Ariadne’s workbench.

“I know because it’s how we won Hilton Head,” he says quietly, head bowed. “The last one I killed on that first day – her blood must’ve mixed with mine. That’s our theory, anyway. Next thing I knew it was the same day all over again. The same failed assault, the same men dying. At some point I quit keeping track.”

When he finally lifts his head he looks like hell, worn down to his bones with the weight of ghosts he can’t bury, and Eames wants to say, _I get it, I understand_ , because even as Kowalski stands here, solid and alive, he haunts Eames.

“So the theory is the females have the power to control time and that power got passed to you and me?” Eames frowns before he’s stunned by a singular idea. “Bloody hell – is that how they’re always one step ahead of us? They keep turning back the clock. They know we’re about to fake left because they’ve already seen us do it.”

“That’s pretty much it, yea,” Ariadne says, looking impressed with his deductive reasoning. “We think there’s a power source, something like a mainframe where they amass the information they gain from each successive iteration. We have to find it and destroy it. It’s the only way we’ll win.”

“How sure are we this mainframe exists?” Eames asks, even though he, personally, has no problem setting off on a wild goose chase if it means that something _changes_. “Hypotheticals are a hard sell.”

“I’ve seen it,” Kowalski says shortly. “And we’re keeping this under wraps. The minute this gets out, everyone and his brother will want you for their personal science project. It stays between us.”

“You’ve seen it? You know where they keep it?”

Kowalski rubs at the back of his neck, forehead creasing in aggravation.

“No.” He lets his hand drop and takes a deep breath through his nose. “I saw it in my head. I know that sounds fucking crazy – ” Honestly, Eames thinks it’s all relative at this point, “ – it was hazy, full of holes, kind of like a dream you try to remember hours after you wake up. I couldn’t extract anything concrete, but I know it’s real and it’s somewhere out there. I _know_.”

Eames leans against his side of the workbench and chews on this new bit of information.

“You lost the ability to reset the day. How?”

Kowalski looks particularly peeved about that point. “Blood transfusion. I was beat up pretty badly on the last day when we held them off long enough for CAS to get to us. When I woke up in the hospital, I knew it was gone.”

Ariadne chimes in, “So that pretty much confirmed it activates in the bloodstream, and it’s easily flushed out. Physiologically it sounds like sepsis, except with no immune response. It’s bizarre.”

But Eames isn’t really listening; Eames is watching Kowalski – the tic in his jaw, the frown line between his eyebrows, body wound up so tight it has to hurt – and _wanting_ , with a sharp pang under his ribs, wanting to lay his hands on Kowalski, take him by the wrists, remind him to breathe and tell him he’ll have his chance to save the world, heroes always do. So they say. Eames is only acquainted with the myths but he doesn’t have to take Kowalski’s measurements to know he fits the mold.

“So what now?” Eames asks, biting his fingernails to keep from doing something too stupid, too trusting.

Kowalski looks at him, assessing, as if he’s still not sure how to classify Eames, how to color-code him and file him properly. He imagines Kowalski’s just the type to have a thing for color-coding.

“How about we try to get off that beach alive?”

Eames spends the next ten minutes breaking down the Montauk assault from the first iteration to the last, everything he managed to change and everything that unfolded anyway despite his best efforts. Then they spend another twenty minutes arguing about strategy – if they should divert the chopper, who drops first, if they should drop simultaneously, which route they should take, most direct or least risky, when to engage and when to retreat – until Ariadne points out, with the air of someone who never asked to supervise bickering children, that if they fuck it up, which they probably will, the day will just start over anyway.

When they finally leave the lab, Kowalski stops him a meter beyond the door with a hand curled around his bicep.

“If you go down,” he says quietly, eyes startlingly apologetic, “make sure you die.”


	3. three.

**_09:08, Montauk_ **

Eames ends up dropping right before Kowalski, giving him a cheeky salute before punching the release. Only when he hits the ground does he realize he’s further up the beach than usual, which means there’s no time for him to –

He spots Yusuf, the flaming chopper half a second later, and turns away before their trajectories cross.

“Planning on joining the war effort anytime soon?”

He blinks as Kowalski walks past him, a ghost of a smile on his lips.

Eames opens his mouth to deliver a lightning comeback, thinking maybe he’ll get to see those dimples again, and then he hears it, the whistle of a high explosive arcing through the air. He dives on instinct, straight on top of Kowalski, knocking him flat on the ground with a dampened thump against the sand and an ugly clank as their suits collide, jarring his bones from hip to shoulder.

A second later the bomb detonates, sending tremors through the ground and a searing mix of sand and shrapnel flying, trying to take the skin off the back of his neck.

“Jesus,” Kowalski breathes when the air settles. Eames rolls to one side and onto his back, feeling that electric hum of a near-death experience lighting up his skin. “I – thanks.”

Kowalski’s eyes are the softest Eames has seen them yet, no doubt the most beautiful sight on these god-forsaken shores, and maybe for the first time in his life, he wonders if the bigger picture isn’t a little overrated.

“We should probably – ” he starts to say wistfully, before he sees the Widow in his periphery, crossing the beach at speed. “On your left!”

Kowalski pushes off the ground, lunging to the right as Eames pulls down his SCAR-X and shoots. Which is when the rest of them swarm in.

 

**_Tuesday, 06:11, JFK FOB_ **

“We need to talk somewhere private. Ariadne’s lab,” Eames says bluntly. Arthur’s hands freeze around the straps of his kneepads, eyebrows shooting up to his hairline. “We were nowhere close to getting off the beach, so as much as this song and dance warms my heart and gives me something to live for, we need a better plan.”

Arthur gives him a once-over, then says simply, “Okay, then let’s talk,” sounding so sure of himself, of Eames, that for a disorienting second he thinks Arthur remembers. His heart’s shot halfway to his throat before he sees the gleam in Arthur’s eyes, telling him he’ll be shipped home in the same box as his effects if it turns out he’s trying to pull a fast one.

Arthur leads him down the barracks. Ariadne opens the door that’s easily three times her mass. Arthur smiles, giving Eames heart palpitations.

“Ariadne. Mind if we take a look at the phase-two prototype?”

When Ariadne lets them in, Eames remarks, “That’s a lovely scarf.”

“Uh. Thanks,” Ariadne says slowly, like she’s mildly concerned he might be a bit unhinged, maybe having seen too much war or swallowed too much sand. He considers quipping, _that makes two of us, love_ , before Arthur speaks.

“Tell me about the beach.”

“They already know we’re coming.” Eames closes his eyes, rubbing at them with a thumb and forefinger, feeling distinctly like a broken record stuck on the worst song of all time. “I’ve reset the day half a dozen times and we still can’t get off the bloody beach.”

“Arthur,” Ariadne says, eyes widening, “this means – ”

“The whereabouts of the power source haven’t surfaced yet,” Eames interrupts, “I need more time.”

Arthur rubs his knuckles against his mouth, staring at the ground. “What happened the last reset?”

“We land, I save us from being blown to smithereens in an impressive display of agility, then the eight-legged bastards tear us to pieces.”

Arthur presses his lips into a thin line. “Can you map out our exact location?”

**_09:08, Montauk_ **

Eames drops earlier than they planned and knocks Yusuf down with an elbow to the face before moving as fast as he can to their designated rendezvous point.

Arthur’s already there looking furious.

“When we go into a combat situation with a plan, I expect you to see it through, Private. This isn’t a fucking game.”

Eames just stands there for a second, blindsided by the accusation, before snapping, “I’m here, aren’t I?” _You condescending prick_ doesn’t make it out of his mouth before he swallows it down, thinking he’s rarely presented with such a scintillating opportunity to be the better man.

“Fine, let’s go,” Arthur says tightly. “If your detour costs us – ”

Something explodes with staggering force and heat at Eames’s three o’clock and the last thing he sees is a chopper blade flying his way.

 

**_Tuesday, 09:08, Montauk_ **

He drops right alongside Arthur as planned and they manage to land ten meters apart in each other’s line of sight.

They cut across the beach below the dunes, making short work of the lone Widows that get in their way – males, slower and stupider than their female counterparts, and small enough that Eames only needs to aim once.

Just as they reach the bluffs and the steep climb inland, a female cuts them off, stopping three meters away, limbs still as stone, marking on her belly like an open wound. For a long moment they stand at an impasse, no one willing to make the first move.

Then Eames reaches for his grenade launcher and fires, pinning his hopes on speed rather than accuracy. The shot cripples three of her legs but she’s already flying at him before he can blink, apoplectic with rage. She cuts him, deep and clean, from navel to shoulder, watching him drop to his knees before seeking out Arthur for another easy kill. Except Arthur’s used the time Eames bought him to weigh his options, and he’s backpedaled a few paces with Excalibur raised over his shoulder.

When she turns, he lets the sword fly, burying it in the center of her abdomen with breathtaking competence. Regrettably by that point Eames is too far gone to properly express his enthusiasm, chest cold, lips numb as he falls over onto his side and swallows, breaths thick and painful. Something trickles down his flank, sticky and warm.

“Eames,” he hears before Arthur drops to one knee beside him, reaching for his handgun. “I’m gonna end it quickly, all right? We’ll start over.”

Arthur presses the muzzle of the Glock to Eames’s forehead and thumbs off the safety.

“We’ll start over,” Arthur repeats, voice low, a little ragged, and even with his vision starting to swim Eames can make out those eyes, piercing clean through his heart.

“See you on the other side, darling,” he chokes out, and then Arthur shoots.

 

**_Tuesday, 06:11, JFK FOB_ **

Their covert strategy session in Ariadne’s lab goes no better and no worse than before. Only this time Eames is all tapped out of patience, mute and irritable, grinding his teeth as Arthur pretends this new plan isn’t just the same bloody game of Russian roulette with more bullets than blanks. When Arthur finally asks for his opinion, he snaps, “Sounds like a winner,” then walks out.

Arthur finds him a half hour later, sat on the ground by the helipads, smoking through his last pack of Mayfairs. Turns out being trapped in a time loop has its perks.

“A fan of Ian Fleming?” Arthur leans against the wall and nods at the paperback that’s seen better days balanced on his left thigh.

Eames takes another pull on his fag before replying, “It was a gift. I’ve always suspected Fleming was a bit of a prick, but I like the book well enough. Reading a page a day really builds up the suspense.”

He imagines there’s no need to spell it out for Arthur, and sure enough Arthur looks away. He looks away as if Eames isn’t making it any easier by telling him, and Eames has half a mind to stand up and break his nose, attractive as it is.

Then Arthur says, “It’s a clever way of keeping track,” eyes guileless, lovely, and Eames starts feeling like a bit of a wanker. “It really screws with your head after a while. With mine anyway. I don’t even know how many times I relived that day. At some point I started thinking maybe it was all a dream and I just couldn’t wake up, no matter – no matter how many times I died. A dream within a dream, except the layers were infinite. It was – fucking terrifying.”

Eames takes a clumsy drag of his cigarette, shaken not so much by the admission as he is by the sight of Arthur – suddenly pale, drawn, fractured somewhere deep – more boy than hero.

“Shit, I didn’t mean – that was the last thing you wanted to hear, wasn’t it,” Arthur rubs at the back of his head, “I’m not good at – the silver lining thing.”

Eames stares at Arthur, at the soft quirk of Arthur’s mouth, and stubs out his cigarette against the asphalt before offering, “Well, I’m god awful at baking and I have appalling musical tastes. So we’ll call it even, shall we?”

Arthur’s answering smile is small but familiar, like the two of them have been here before.

**_09:08, Montauk_ **

They hit the beach and sprint immediately towards higher ground to secure a better vantage point and minimize the likelihood of another ambush. Barring an embarrassingly close call involving Eames’s head and Arthur’s sword, things go swimmingly. They leave the failed assault behind them and cover a good two miles, sky throwing off its heavier clouds and promising sun.

Then they see the dark mass converging on them from the northern shore – a bloody legion, outnumbering them twenty to one.

“Goddamn beaches,” Eames swears as they stand there with nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. “Couldn’t they have picked something more interesting? The mountains, for example. Or the Amazon! The Amazon would be fucking fantastic terrain. Lots of trees to duck behind, vines to swing on.”

Arthur raises his eyebrows, wrapping one hand around Excalibur and readying his grenade launcher with the other.

“Out of all the things you could be upset about right now, you’re upset they lack imagination?”

“What can I say, I have high standards for things that want me dead.”

Which is when the Widows reach them.

Eames blasts a decisive hole through one and sees Arthur gut another before ducking and rolling, narrowly avoiding having his head lopped clean off his shoulders. He guns down two more, slowing a third so Arthur can stab it through the back, and for a brilliant, deluded moment, he thinks they’ll make it through.

Then a savage limb catches him in the stomach and sends him flying through the air. He crashes into Arthur and they go down hard, landing chest to chest, Arthur’s head striking the sand with sickening force.

“Bloody buggering – ” Eames gasps, bruised lungs meeting him halfway as he reaches out to cradle the back of Arthur’s head with one hand. “Arthur – Arthur, are you all right?”

He blinks up at Eames, swallowing thickly, eyes a little unfocused, and Eames shifts closer, thumbing the corner of Arthur’s lips as they part on a breath.

Then he feels it – like a battering ram splitting him wide open – hot, quick steel going straight through him and into Arthur, then just a little deeper to ensure a job well done before retracting, making their bodies jerk. Arthur’s throat works soundlessly, eyes wide with shock, while Eames chokes on a breath, thick and wet, hands still framing Arthur’s face, feeling the two of them shiver and burn on that narrow precipice between dying and death.

“We’ll – start over,” Eames says, low and strangled, faintly hoping they topple over the edge before the pain kicks in.

“See you on the – ” Arthur starts, lips blood-slicked, and Eames doesn’t let him finish. Eames kisses him, open-mouthed, fumbling, wheezing from the effort, in case there’s no going back and this really is the end of them.

He doesn’t so much hear as _feel_ Arthur groan, tongue flicking out just once to taste him. And as he takes his last breath against Arthur’s mouth, he’s hit between the eyes by a revelation.


	4. four.

**_Tuesday, 06:11, JFK FOB_ **

“Is anyone on this base licensed to administer Somnacin? We need to steal some,” is what Eames leads with.

Then he watches the incredible feat that is Arthur’s eyebrows disappearing almost entirely into his hairline. In retrospect, he concedes it was a bit crass of him to suggest Arthur help him perpetrate a theft that, if they were caught, would definitively get them court-martialed – imprisoned for treason wouldn’t be unlikely – when they’ve, technically, only just met.

“What the fuck?” Arthur says, hands twitching like he’s ready to go for a gun, or Eames’s jugular, if it comes to that.

“Ariadne,” Eames blurts out by way of calling for parley, because, if he’s being quite honest, the song and dance is driving him out of his bloody mind. “Let’s, the three of us, talk it out like rational adults, shall we?”

Once in the secrecy of Ariadne’s lab, Eames gives them the equivalent of fast-forwarded video highlights before he finally gets to the matter at hand.

“The first time you told me about the power source, you said the images came to you like a dream, hazy, slipping away like you’d just woken up.” He paces the length of the lab, running a hand over his nape then across his jaw, heart racing alongside his head. “It makes me think you had the information all along, it was just buried somewhere, layers deep in your subconscious. And those layers eroded little by little until the pieces started to loosen. So, what if we found a way to speed up that process?”

When he looks up, Arthur’s standing there gnawing furiously at his lip, as if he’s just met an oasis in the middle of a wasteland, parched and starved, and his gut reaction isn’t unmitigated relief, it’s uncertainty, suspicion. And in that moment Eames wishes, with an ache in his throat, that they could’ve met under different circumstances, better ones – when they were both still brave in the way that’s made for living, not dying.

“You’re saying we shock your system in some way?” Ariadne frowns, considering. “A way that I want to hope isn’t legally or morally ambiguous, but I’m getting the distinct feeling that it’s absolutely one of the two and probably both.”

Eames turns to her, beaming. “You must’ve known me in a past life, love.”

“Somnacin,” Arthur explains abruptly. “Private Eames is suggesting we put him under with Somnacin to try to extract the information we need.”

“It’s Eames, just – ” Eames stops short and snuffs out the sudden flare of irritation, taking a breath. “The drug’s proven remarkably effective with trauma patients, replaced virtually all traditional forms of exposure therapy. It pulls you into REM sleep and before you know it, the repressed memories are hitting you like a bloody train.”

Arthur watches him, carefully, but doesn’t ask how he knows, doesn’t ask why.

“Essentially it knocks down all the walls your subconscious builds to keep those memories from getting out,” Arthur adds.

“Okay,” Ariadne says slowly, narrowing her eyes, “How do we get it?”

“Ah, the million dollar question,” Eames temporizes.

“Only licensed medical professionals can administer Somnacin, and the closest trauma center is at MOB,” Arthur drags out, clearly refusing to be the breaker of bad news.

Finally Eames tells Ariadne with patent remorse, “Looks like we’ll have to break into West Point.”

**_06:37, I-678 N_ **

Ten minutes into their hour-long drive – probably closer to halfway with the way Arthur’s blowing past the mile markers – Eames decides he’s starving.

“You didn’t think to bring breakfast with you, I suppose?” The only response he gets is a slight surge of the speedometer. “Right. Hunger is secondary to saving the world. Must be an essential part of the training I skipped.”

Arthur faces resolutely forward, eyes hidden behind green-tinted aviators, though Eames swears he sees the twitch of a smile.

Undeterred, he feels around and under the seats of their commandeered ATV before suddenly declaring, “A-ha!”, triumphantly brandishing a strip of beef jerky.

At last Arthur spares him a glance. “Are you seriously gonna eat that? Because if you start puking your guts out while we’re trying to sneak through a military compound, I will literally kill you. And then you’ll have to start this whole thing over.”

The threat, while credible, does nothing to ease his hunger pangs.

“I’ll take my chances,” he says, then takes a bite and considers. Barring the fact that it’s hard as rock and he may have chipped a tooth, it’s surprisingly flavorful. “You’re the sort to throw out perfectly good food on the expiry date, aren’t you.”

It’s only after the words are out in the open that he realizes they sound fond, in a way that sinks through the air with a warm, pleasurable weight, as if he knows Arthur, knows him well enough to be free and unthinking with his affection.

They lapse into silence, Arthur’s hands white-knuckled around the wheel, stale beef jerky sticking to the back of Eames’s throat. There’s no way around it, this excruciating imbalance where Eames remembers the terrible intimacy of Arthur dying beneath him, and Arthur remembers nothing at all.

He fumbles for his pack of Mayfairs, then, realizing he’s left his bloody lighter on base, slumps back into his seat defeated. For a minute he closes his eyes, listening to the wind whip past his ears, and thinks about how different it would’ve been if he’d gone to another city, or just stayed in London, not had a crippling crisis of conscience, avoided this mess altogether. Or maybe, he thinks, he would’ve fallen into this time loop anyway, died not ten but a hundred times over, met another Arthur Kowalski. Except, even as he’s thinking it, he finds it hard to believe that this Arthur beside him, all edges and corners and scintillating conviction, isn’t one of a kind.

When he opens his eyes again the Hudson’s to his right, hugging a stone-gray embankment that slopes up to a swath of greenery, overgrown but still an incredibly refreshing sight after the soul-crushing monotony of sand and barracks.

“Almost makes you feel like all’s well with the world,” he murmurs, the blur of lush landscape soothing, hypnotic.

Arthur waits a beat before confessing, “I barely remember what that’s like. What my life was like – before.”

Then Eames asks, because all of a sudden he’s greedy for more, “What do you remember?”, ready to hoard the stray pieces of Arthur before, Arthur who only knew distantly of violence and bereavement, who never once faced the burden of putting a dying man out of his misery.

There’s another long stretch of silence before Arthur answers.

“I worked too much and hated my apartment, how small and sterile it was, even though in three years I hadn’t put up one damn picture on the wall. I loved my job but everyone thought I was an asshole, mostly for leaving the office parties still sober enough to feel my legs.” Arthur pauses. “I didn’t go home enough, skipped a few Christmases even though I had nowhere else to be. I threatened all of my sister’s boyfriends. She always went for the lying, cheating scumbags who only cared about their own dicks.”

“And what about your boyfriends? Or girlfriends,” Eames adds for the sake of political correctness, watching the minute twitch of Arthur’s jaw, detectable only because the rest of him is so bloody still.

“You’re the sort to cross all kinds of boundaries knowing you’ll just talk yourself out of trouble, aren’t you,” Arthur says dryly, then, without warning, swerves the car with a neat jerk of his wrist, making Eames grab onto the dash to keep from flying out the side. “Sorry, pothole.”

Eames settles back into his seat, harboring suspicions of the veracity of that claim, although not before drinking in the sight of Arthur – nothing but pale skin and long, lean lines – and saying with a smile, “Depends on the trouble.”

Surprising to no one, getting into the compound is a stroll in the park with Arthur’s impeccable credentials.

“They look ready to give you a bloody 21-gun salute,” Eames drawls, tipping his head back towards the stationed guards, barely legal to buy porn and cigarettes by the looks of them.

Arthur ignores him, wending the car through the grounds lined edge to edge with tidy rows of trainees, running headlong into war and still insulated from it, heads no doubt filled with fanciful notions of glory in death, of heroism, hope, springing up poetically like a flower from a single crack in the desert. The sort of recruits they’re seeing in spades now that NATO’s redoubled their PR efforts, still operating under the consensus that propaganda is less cold-blooded than enforced conscription.

They park by the left wing of the trauma center with doors marked Personnel Only, and climb out, assessing their options.

“We’re better off bypassing reception but my temporary badge – ” Arthur starts to say, pulling off his aviators, before Eames cuts him off, eyeing the entrance that’s just been propped open by an officer searching his pockets, forehead creased in irritation.

“All you need is a diversion,” he murmurs, then strolls over, affecting a tone of regret tinged with an addict’s desperation. “Sorry, mate, I don’t suppose you have a lighter on hand? I’ve been dying for my morning smoke but mine must’ve fell out my pockets at some point. My lucky day.”

The officer – late 20s, dark-haired, pretty face – looks up, startled, before laughing.

“Crazy coincidence, I’m looking for mine, actually.” Then peering around guiltily, he adds, “We’re not allowed to smoke on or near the premises, but – ”

“What they don’t know won’t hurt them,” Eames winks, cocking his head towards the back of the building to suggest they live a little dangerously. In his periphery, Arthur sidles up from the corner.

As soon as the officer steps away from the door to let it swing shut, Arthur slips in from behind without a sound.

It takes Eames another seven minutes to shake off his new friend and double back. As soon as he taps on the window, Arthur opens the door.

“Took you long enough,” he hisses. “You couldn’t save the flirting for when we’re not committing a fucking felony?”

“Darling, you’re not – ” _jealous_ dies in Eames’s throat at the look on Arthur’s face promising fervently to strangle him with his own intestines, not so much in fear as in the expectation that, were that to happen, they would most definitely get caught.

When they reach the lift, they pause to smile at the two nurses who walk out, and wait until they’re out of earshot.

“The Somnacin and the PASIVs will be in a central location,” Eames says, scanning the building directory. “Offices, labs, pharmacy – CTU, cognitive therapy unit, that’s it. Third floor.”

Which turns out to be easier said than done because the place is a bloody maze. They go in a complete circle once and run into dead ends twice before finding the room.

“Shit, that’s not a standard card reader,” Arthur says, linking his hands behind his head.

Eames stares at the damn thing, blinking smugly. “I imagine it won’t be easy tracking down a badge that’ll let us in.”

“We’ll just invite more trouble the longer we wait.”

Eames drags a hand over his jaw, taking another minute to sift through the options before pulling out his Beretta.

“Eames, hold – ”

“We came for the information in my head and we’re going to damn well get it.” He glances at Arthur, aiming the gun at the reader and thumbing the safety. “Security will run us down hard, so just make sure to kill me before they catch up.”

Arthur clenches his jaw, nods. And then Eames shoots.

The sound of the gunshot ricochets off the walls for a moment, but then there’s utter silence. No shrill alarm, no footsteps thudding round the corner.

“Well, that went remarkably better than expected,” he says before yanking the door open. “If you need to pull me out, do it at the last possible second.”

The PASIVs are stacked neatly in the corner when he walks into the back room, outfitted with a cot, a dual EKG-EEG machine, a defibrillator – and a veritable stockpile of pillows that makes Eames think, wistfully, that he hasn’t slept soundly in what feels like half a bloody lifetime.

He pulls off the topmost PASIV and takes a few seconds to fiddle with the timer and dosage level, just so he’s vaguely sure it’ll be physiologically safe, then stretches out on the cot.

“Here goes nothing,” he mutters and inserts the needle.

It feels like the first time they put him under – like he’s waking up from a deep sleep instead of falling into one. He’s standing on a beach, of course he is, but it’s not Montauk, it’s Brighton. The aftermath of it. Bodies of the dead strewn as far as the eye can see, faces sharp and clear, twisted in agony and naked, blistering fear. The chalk cliffs, bone-white, running down to a crimson sea battering the shoreline. He lurches toward them, stomach heaving, then trips and falls to his knees, fingers digging into sand, soggy, sticky with –

Then the beach is gone, Brighton’s gone, and in place of it – a thunderous silence, a cavern of marble and stone bathed in rose-gold tones, the severe symmetry of arched pillars guarding a high altar, ivory, resplendent, carved and consecrated with a reverence that’s only ever been unknowable to Eames.

He climbs to his feet and takes two slow steps back. There’s still a faint smell of death in the air, corpses sinking into the earth, a smell of the sea, prying his chest open.

When he cranes his neck, the mosaic is just as extraordinary as he remembers it – the oversaturated blues and luminous golds, the gilded architecture, the ostentatious tableau of adoration, and in the center: Christ, risen and triumphant, bearing his sacred heart.

Which is when the ground shakes, then rumbles – then _erupts_ as an unearthly steel monstrosity pushes up and through, groaning as it rises, splitting pillars, flooding the pews with water, cold and opaque.

“ _Bloody_ – ” Eames curses before the thing hits the dome, sending a thousand spidery cracks running through God’s glory.

He can make out the surface of it now, pulsing and patterned in shimmering tangled webs, almost like neural networks, firing, relaying information –

And then he wakes up, apparently in the middle of falling off the cot, and crashes to the floor in a heap, pain shooting through the hip that just broke his fall.

Arthur’s hovering over him with a frown, like he could’ve fended off gravity if he’d just tried a little harder.

“What was that for?” he demands, glaring at Arthur’s proffered hand with righteous indignation before taking it.

“I couldn’t wake you up,” Arthur says brusquely, “and we need to get the hell out of here. There’s another exit this way.”

The alarm is sounding through the corridors when they push the doors open. A stern female voice informs them this is not a drill.

“We’re probably better off starting over,” Eames shouts as they sprint for the stairwell.

“We can make it,” Arthur says, ramming his body through the exit and flying down the stairs.

Eames hears security on their tail by the time they reach the second floor, someone barking orders, boots clacking against vinyl.

“Taking a right then left should get us to the car,” Arthur says, pausing at the door to the ground floor, the set of his jaw, hard and stubborn, so familiar by now it’s almost a comfort.

“I’ve always been a champion of positivity,” Eames smiles before taking the lead.

The first bullet catches him in the thigh, the second below the ribs when he twists, falling.

The last thing he remembers hearing is, “ _Goddamn it_ , hold your fire!”


	5. five.

**_Wednesday, 00:57, West Point_ **

He slips in and out of consciousness, surrounded by white then dark, then a gray in between. There’s silence broken by murmurs, sharp and appeasing. Time lengthens and contracts, and lengthens again.

He wakes, and the first thing he thinks is this isn’t his hotel room. The first thing he feels is bloody fucking agony because, actually, he’s in a hospital with a hole in his gut and the morphine’s worn off. Or, more likely, they never administered any after strapping him down and handcuffing him to the gurney.

“Fuck,” he announces to the empty room at large.

Then he sees the drained bag of O positive, and he feels something else, something missing, taken, scraped out from under his skin, making it feel a little loose around his bones.

“Shit, shit, shit.” He pushes up against his straps, rocking violently from side to side until the gurney tips and lands on one side with a loud crash, heart frantic, thrashing in his chest. He’s been backed into corners before, just as deep as this one and a hell of a lot darker; it’s the fear he can’t quell, the nauseating panorama of possibilities that goes from Arthur locked in a cell to Arthur tortured within an inch of his life, to Arthur –

“Jesus, are you trying to wake up the whole goddamn base,” he hears, low and rough, before his straps are cut with two quick swipes of a blade and he drops to the ground. Then Arthur’s there, perfectly whole, perfectly alive, walking around to undo the handcuffs, face pinched, fingers cool and dry around his wrist, aggressively efficient. “Half those men are fucking stir crazy. They don’t need a reason to put a few more bullet holes in you.”

He looks up, startled, when Eames grabs his forearm, digging into muscle and sinew, and breathing fully at how solid he feels, how _warm_.

“It’s gone. No more resets, I can feel it.”

There’s a moment when neither of them moves and they just stare at each other, feeling the enormity of the discovery close in on them on all sides, shrinking their window of opportunity until it’s claustrophobically small, impossibly, even. And Eames really fucking hates that word.

Then Arthur says, “We’ll deal with that later. First, let’s get the fuck out of here.”

**_02:13, Park Hyatt_ **

When they get out of the car, the streets are slicked with rain and submerged at the seams, looking filthy rather than cleansed, coated with the rubbish that hasn’t been swept up for months. Eames imagines there’s only one public good people want these days: an end to the war, a total eradication of the parasite that’s infected their planet and proven to be annoyingly resilient.

Arthur walks around to the boot and extracts a first aid kit, nodding at Eames’s patched-up wound that’s seeping generously through the dressing.

“We’ll have to make do with what we have.”

Turns out what they have is a promising assortment of mini liquor bottles, which Eames discovers upon raiding the mini-bar, feeling a little woozy now with pain. He sits on the edge of the bed, knocks down three Jacks in a row, then lets Arthur work his magic with gauze, antiseptic, and duct tape, with those efficient fingers that peel him out of his shirt and skirt along his flank like he’s some fragile thing.

The liquor’s already starting to take the edge off, rushing through his bloodstream with the aid of an empty stomach, and still he grits his teeth, hissing messily when Arthur applies the new bandages soaked in saline.

“Eames isn’t your real name, is it,” Arthur says suddenly, quietly, and it’s more of an assertion than a question. “You’ve been to the front before. Where?”

Rationally, he knows he’s miles from the water, that what he’s smelling is the saline, but for a split second the memory’s right on top of him, sinking like sediment straight through his skin and down to his bones.

“Brighton,” he answers, because maybe it’s time – maybe, having finally run down the clock, it’s time to confront his ghosts. And Arthur makes it easy, easier, with those eyes, fathoms deep, saying without reservation that he’s been to hell and back, same as Eames. “It was a slaughter, like Montauk, and Lima, and Casablanca before that. We already made it to the beach before they hit back. And I could’ve – could’ve used my fucking head, pulled my squad back. But I told them it was what we had to do, that we had one job to do – Christ, I was full of it. And I wasn’t even playing hero. I was – I was playing _God_.”

His breaths are harsh and thick, jarring in the quiet of the room. Arthur presses down the ends of the bandage with a firm hand that stays splayed under Eames’s ribs, riding on the shuddering rise and fall of them, an anchor he casts out for Eames that slows his wild momentum.

“They were kids, barely twenty-one. Half of them probably hadn’t left home before, seen death firsthand, fallen in love. And I sent them back to their parents in coffins. But – what’s worse, what really keeps me up at night, is that I didn’t die with them. I got to live, and how fucked up does the world have to be to let that happen,” Eames finishes, not angry, just honest, more stripped down than he’s been since the days after his homecoming, when he called those parents, every one of them, trying to apologize for being there when their children were not.

Arthur lets his hand drop, then stands abruptly to walk to the windows, streaked softly with the rain that’s still drizzling down, swallowed up by the dark of the city down below. Eames fumbles for another bottle, screwing off the top and tipping it down his throat, all the while watching Arthur press three fingertips against the glass to chase the raindrops.

“Sergeant Mallorie Cobb,” he says, miles and months away. “She led Bravo Squad at Hilton Head. I relived those hours – hell, I don’t even know how many times. Every time I watched her die. I could never – never save her, no matter what I did, not even when we won.”

He turns then, corners of his mouth lifting, and Eames thinks he’s never seen a smile so fond and still so utterly heartbreaking.

“Everyone called her Mal but she was lovely. She threw these dinner parties that went on until morning, and if you didn’t walk away from them fucking – _happy_ , then you were doing something wrong. She gave terrible advice to complete strangers. She drank too much wine. She believed in plain croissants and wide-brimmed hats, and true love.” Arthur turns away again, staring at his reflection in the window. “I couldn’t save her.”

Eames stands up and walks forward, stopping just out of arm’s reach because this is an Arthur he hasn’t encountered before – Arthur with his walls down and his heart in plain sight, poised to give up the idea that he can make amends because it’s only ever been flawed.

“The Sacré-Coeur in Paris, that’s where they’ve been keeping the source. We can still destroy it.”

Arthur’s reflection blinks at Eames, startled, as if he’s forgotten why he’s even here, in this wasted, washed-out city that’s been left to drown.

“We can still do one more thing – and try to get it right.” Eames takes another step forward, thinking, with growing conviction, that this is the Arthur he’s been looking for all this time. “You and me, we can try to save the world one more time, yea? I still have another round left in me. What do you say?”

Arthur turns around, quiet, eyes gleaming in the dark. Moonlight, preternaturally bright above a blacked-out city, slips across his cheek and the bow of his neck.

“I say it’s worth a try,” he answers, except, with the way he’s looking at Eames, it sounds extraordinarily like, _I wonder how that could’ve gone: you and me_.

Which is when Eames dispenses with uncertainty. Eames reaches out, framing Arthur’s face firmly with one hand, and crowds him against the window, thumbing the line of his cheekbone, the pliant seam of his mouth. And he stares at Eames, a tremor splitting the length of him before he slides his tongue out against Eames’s thumb, nudges it between his lips, scraping his teeth against it, a little coy, a little dirty.

Eames lets out a moan, half-swallowed, low in his throat, and then they’re meeting in the middle, sealing their mouths together, hot and wet. Arthur angles his head, relaxes, just enough that it feels submissive, and Eames makes another ruined sound as he pushes forward, delves into that sweet, slick heat, sucking and biting until he feels Arthur fully hard against him, hips jerking, _needy_.

“Eames,” cuts through the thick haze of lust, Arthur whimpering, already begging, and Eames simultaneously shoves a thigh between Arthur’s legs and grinds down, crushing Arthur against the window, shifting his hand to grip Arthur’s chin, make his mouth open wider, take Eames deeper.

And somehow in the middle of it all, the broken sounds and beautiful surrender, Arthur finds the wherewithal to slip a hand between them and under Eames’s shirt, dipping it into the waistband of his trousers. Before his brain can catch up, Arthur’s wrapping long, greedy fingers around his cock, making him choke, crack along the edges because he doesn’t even remember the last time he had someone else’s hands on him, and Arthur’s feels hell-bent on taking him apart.

“Fuck,” he hisses into Arthur’s mouth as Arthur jerks his wrist, grip just this side of painful, “I suspected, you know, with – _ah_ – with how deftly you handle a gun that you’d be fantastic at this.”

“So you’ve fantasized about this, about me,” Arthur murmurs unexpectedly, voice a full octave lower than normal, banking heat, like he could get off shamelessly, languidly on the thought of Eames’s secret want burning him up from the inside out.

“Yes,” Eames breathes out, sliding his mouth in a damp trail across and down Arthur’s jaw, pressing his tongue against Arthur’s pulse point as Arthur tips his head back, letting it thud against the glass, throat working around a soft, devastated groan. “About your hands all over me, your mouth red and bruised and wrapped around my cock.”

Arthur’s hand stutters. Eames drops his mouth lower to lap at the delicate hollow between Arthur’s collarbones, skin salty and slick.

“Sometimes I get you ready with my fingers, sometimes with my tongue, but it always ends the same way.” Eames plunges his own hand between them, making short work of Arthur’s trousers, and then slides their cocks together, helping Arthur fist them both at once.

“Oh, Jesus Christ, _fuck_ ,” Arthur bites out, banging his head viciously against the window.

“It always ends with you spread wide open, eager and dripping, looking utterly wrecked, begging me to fill you up,” Eames manages to finish before their rhythm, sloppy and punishing and _good_ , tips them over the edge at once. And then he can’t bloody breathe as his orgasm slams into him, drowning him even as it rips him apart. And he thinks, distantly, if this is his end – prostrate at Arthur’s feet – then he’s imagined far worse and little better.

He comes out on the other side with his forehead heavy on Arthur’s shoulder, one hand pressed against the window, the other dragging their come against Arthur’s stomach, and he’s not entirely sure who’s propping up whom, but he can’t be arsed to move yet, content to breathe in the smell of sex and Arthur. The air is still drenched with humidity, pooling at the base of his spine, between his shoulder blades.

“Thank fuck I brought us a change of clothes,” Arthur says, words a little slurred.

That makes Eames lift his head up slowly, eyebrows raised, to say salaciously, “How exactly did you imagine this trip would go?”, expecting a cutting retort. Instead, Arthur stays quiet and tips his head back again, breaths deep, carefully measured.

“Hey,” Eames prompts gently, “I’ll warn you I don’t do well with sentimentality. It turns me into an ugly, slobbering mess.”

“I shouldn’t have kept us going,” Arthur says abruptly, with the kind of regret Eames recognizes, the kind that takes you by the throat and squeezes until the world darkens by degrees. “I shouldn’t have made you take the risk. If we had started over when you said, if I didn’t get you fucking shot in the stomach, we could’ve done this right. We could’ve – ”

Eames presses a thumb against Arthur’s mouth and shuts him up.

“No sense in crying over spilled milk,” Eames murmurs with half a smile, because it’s what Arthur needs to hear, because it makes no difference to him one way or the other; he’s long since been out of his depth, never having had anything to lose before yesterday. And now – now he thinks if Arthur were to ask him outright whether they should see this through or just walk away, he’d be tempted to do an entirely selfish thing. So he doesn’t give Arthur reason to ask. “We’re going to Paris and it’ll be completely tourist-free. How’s that for a silver lining?”

**_03:42, LGA_ **

Eames realizes belatedly that given the current state of France – overrun by a hostile alien species – their transportation options are limited. Luckily, Arthur knows how to pilot a helicopter, of course he does, and LaGuardia, having been summarily supplanted by JFK as the region’s FOB once innovation had caught up with demand, is a treasure trove of last-generation long-range Skyrunners.

They pick out the one showing the least wear and tear and prep for departure, which translates to Eames hovering over Arthur and making supremely unhelpful comments as Arthur fiddles with the flight controls. When he finally engages the throttle and the collective, he gets them ten meters off the ground before they suddenly drop, tilting erratically.

“Jesus Christ!” Eames yelps in the middle of having a fucking coronary, grabbing a hold of Arthur’s seat. “You said you could fly the bloody thing!”

Arthur stabilizes them before clarifying calmly, “I said I _learned_ how to fly one. Flight simulations aren’t a carbon copy of reality, all right? I got it. You hovering over me like I’ll kill us at any moment isn’t helping.”

It takes the next two hours for Eames to settle into his skin again, and he knows what’s really at the root of his anxiety isn’t the journey, it’s the black box waiting for them at the end of it promising to be a disaster of epic proportions.

The last two hours he’s restless again, unable to sit still for more than a five-minute stretch, pacing in and out of the cockpit until Arthur threatens to crash them into the English Channel.

Then, finally, they catch sight of the Basilica, a monolith of bleached stone looming over a ghost of a city hollowed out but still magnificent in its desolation.

“I can’t believe we’re about to blow up the Sacré-Coeur,” Arthur says. “This is literally sacrilege.”

“You’re doing a noble thing. God will look at the big picture and forgive you,” Eames reassures him.

Then Arthur locks onto his target and fires.

The missiles, three in quick succession, take out the bell tower and the roof below it, leaving scorched stone, a gaping wound, and plumes of smoke dirtying the atmosphere, turning the Basilica into one more grotesque casualty of war.

Arthur banks the helicopter until they’re directly over the opening.

“Jesus, the whole thing is flooded. I don’t see anything.” And Arthur’s right, there’s nothing but murky, stagnant water when Eames peers down, barely a ripple breaking the surface, at least five meters deep.

“Shit.” He runs a hand across his scalp in aggravation, heart dropping like dead weight. “Shit, shit, shit.”

“Think about the dream again,” Arthur presses, “maybe you’re misremembering, or missing something.”

“Yea, okay, I’m thinking.” Eames presses his forearm against the window and stares at the wreckage. He remembers the altar, the pillars still intact, the vaulted mosaic overhead, the beast of a machine exploding through the ground like a bloody killer whale breaching –

“Well, think faster, we’ve almost out of fuel.”

“I’m thinking – ” he grinds out, then stops short, sucking in a sharp breath. _Breaching_. “It’s underwater. The sodding thing is underwater, that must be it. Get us a bit closer and I can drop down. Then you can land.”

“The hell you will,” Arthur snaps. “You’re not going down there alone. I don’t care if this thing’s in fucking outer space, we’re sticking to the plan.”

It was worth a try. If Eames thought knocking Arthur unconscious and taking matters into his own hands would keep Arthur definitively alive, he’d do it in a heartbeat. For second he feels that regret, clammy, cold, merciless against his throat.

“Fine, okay, the plan.”

He straps on the AED and two curved daggers – cold comfort, really, given what he might be up against, but still preferable to being unarmed. Arthur grabs his sword and switches on the auto-pilot before they pull on the harnesses.

As Arthur reaches out to slide the doors open he deadpans, “Paris isn’t all it’s cracked up to be,” and Eames presses his palm over Arthur’s hand, fitting their fingers together.

Arthur looks at him, without a trace of bravado, an insistence that it’s all a matter of perspective. Instead there’s fear, just short of debilitating, inexorable, because it’s a lie, plain and simple, to think you can make peace with a thing like this, running headlong into death before your time is up, no matter what you’re fighting for. It’s familiar and mutual, and still it looks twice as devastating on Arthur, making it infinitely harder to swallow, which is why Eames doesn’t say what he means. He doesn’t say, _I wish you’d seen Paris in its former glory. I wish I’d taken you._

He just says, “We’ll just have to dream a little bigger then, won’t we, darling.”

Then they jump.

They run out of cord five meters above the water and rip themselves out of their harnesses so they can freefall the rest of the way. When they plunge in, it feels like a bloody ice bath.

“ _Fuck_ , it’s freezing,” is the first thing he splutters when he breaks through the surface. “Why couldn’t they have picked fucking Tahiti.”

Arthur pops up ten seconds later, gritting his teeth at the cold.

“It’s down there, I saw it. It’s deep. We – ” And then he suddenly goes under, like something’s dragged him down by the ankles.

“Shit,” Eames says, before sucking in as much air as he can and diving.

It’s unexpectedly clear and bright down below, and he immediately spots Arthur, grappling with a Widow that’s got one limb curled around his leg, not moving nearly as quickly as it does on land, but still quick enough to be a nasty inconvenience. Which is when the second one appears, darting towards Eames like a giant homicidal squid, and he pulls out his daggers just in time to parry a blow, softened and slowed by the water. A second limb nicks him in the thigh. His blood seeps and billows out like smoke.

He feels his chest tighten, figures he has about twenty more seconds before he passes out, possibly less before he gets gutted, and then Arthur’s there, plunging Excalibur into the Widow’s back, using its body as leverage to push the sword deeper.

When they finally surface again, they’re both half-drowned and grim.

“You need to do it now,” Arthur tells him tightly. “We swim straight down this time. I’ll watch your back.”

This time Eames sees the source, pulsing below them like it’s alive, rising from a yawning abyss. There’s no telling how deep it goes and he shudders, even as he cuts through the water towards it, at the thought of the utter absence of light stretching on for miles without end.

He sees a third Widow in his periphery, Arthur heading it off, and pushes forward, just a few more meters, and then he’s right in front of it.

There’s heat coming off it in intermittent waves, and it’s warm to the touch, slippery. His hand comes away from it coated in a viscous fluid. He rubs it between two fingers, the memory of it sour in his throat, and imagines the narrative bending back on itself, one more time, to bring him full circle.

He fumbles for the AED at the small of his back, the latest paraphernalia of the military-industrial complex – a portable nuclear weapon packed with the energy equivalent of 10 tons of TNT.

He wastes no time ripping off the detonation strip and jamming the device between two segments of steel that tremor a little, like it detects the intrusion. He makes sure the red eye’s signaling the countdown before he turns – and sees Arthur across the chasm just as he’s impaled by the Widow, its limb glinting, mocking Eames for ever thinking the hero could be spared.

Then the world explodes.


	6. six.

**_Wednesday, 07:08, Shoreditch, London_ **

Eames jolts awake, back damp with sweat, blankets kicked off his bed and sheets knotted around his ankles. His heart’s lurching laboriously in his chest, rhythm haphazard, as if it’s relearning the ropes.

It takes him one glance around to know exactly where he is even though he hasn’t been here in months, and he thinks he’s either in the most unimaginative, half-arsed afterlife the universe could’ve possibly dealt him, or –

He feels his dog tags against his chest, metal warmed to skin temperature. He remembers flying back to base with his squad, exhaustion cutting them off at the knees, painted in the shades of war, but victorious, _alive_.

He tumbles out of bed, nearly braining himself against the corner of the nightstand, and storms into the living room to turn on the television, switching rapidly through the programming until he finds the news.

“ _– another decisive victory yesterday, this time on the beaches of Montauk, rounding off a successful North American campaign to contain the invasion that’s devastated parts of France and Scandinavia. Here with me now is Sergeant Arthur Kowalski to comment on the Montauk assault and the string of momentous victories starting with Brighton that’s turned the tide of this war. Sergeant –_ ”

When the camera pans to Arthur, Eames stares, distantly aware that he’s sat down hard on the sofa. Arthur’s in uniform, Arthur’s smiling, dimples lopsided, and Arthur’s looking at the camera, at Eames, eyes bright and expectant, like he’s calling Eames home.

**_13:23, JFK FOB_ **

“Kowalski? He’s off-duty the next few days. If you can’t find him in the barracks, he’s probably gone somewhere with better food, more booze, and a warm embrace, if you know what I mean,” the Staff Sergeant tells him with a leer that makes Eames want to say no and then give him a warm punch in the face.

Tango’s assigned section is the first place he checks and, sure enough, Arthur’s there packing his bag, in a perfectly pressed Oxford, rolled up to the elbows, slate gray trousers molded to his backside, lines strange and sleek, and still Eames would pick him out in the most crowded place on Earth if it came to that.

Eames stops a meter away, heart in his mouth, pressed up against his teeth, ready to spill out with a word, and that’s when Arthur turns, eyes widening, stricken quietly with relief, mouth parting and trembling, remembering.

And before Eames can move, pull Arthur in, breathe him in, and let himself feel utterly, unspeakably selfish, Arthur says, smiling, “About damn time. Now, how about we start dreaming bigger, you and me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, you can find me [on Tumblr](http://scribblscrabbl.tumblr.com). I love it when people say hello. :)


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